**3. Well-being**

Children's rest, recovery, and well-being are essential, and all decisions must be based on what is considered best for the individual child [18]. The preschool curriculum [11] emphasises that the preschool must offer a good environment and a wellbalanced daily rhythm adapted to children's needs, meaning that activities are part of the learning environment. It states, "Preschool education should be planned and implemented to promote the children's development, health, and well-being" (p. 7). Preschool children can have extended stays at preschool and leisure activities during their free time, which can cause stress that can manifest itself in different ways, and their experiences of tension and relaxation can be very individual [19]. Therefore, preschool staff needs to construct places where pressure is reduced and become aware of how they can contribute to feeling better [20]. According to the preschool curriculum [11], "the children must be given the conditions to develop versatile movement skills by being allowed to participate in physical activities and stay in different natural environments. The education should enable the children to experience the joy of movement and develop their interest in being physically active (p. 9). Evidence-based interventions in the preschool learning environment to increase physical activity to improve children's health can be found through previous research [21]. There is room for research that touches on the balance between physical activity and rest and the children's recovery.

### **4. School improvement**

School improvement research examines how society mandates reforms can be implemented in schools' pedagogical work, where the basic idea is to control this through improvement efforts [22]. Hopkins [23] defines school improvement as a distinct approach to create educational change that enhances student outcomes and strengthens the school's capacity for managing change. Harris [24] argues that successful school improvement depends on the school's ability to manage change and development and should be a process. In professional, collegial learning communities, teachers and other school staff work to accomplish a unified understanding of their professional mission by identifying fundamental knowledge, skills, motivation, values, and attitudes necessary for the work [25].

Researchers have described school improvement processes in phases such as initiation, implementation, institutionalisation, and diffusion [26–29]; initiation means a new idea is presented in an organisation, for example a school. This idea must then be implemented in practice, which involves anchoring ideas, activities or structures in the individuals who will create change [30]. Institutionalisation is a process where the organisation has made an idea known that is fully established in the organisation. After this phase, experiences can be spread to other schools [31]. Previous studies show that school improvement can be challenging to implement and that a commitment of teachers is needed in school improvement processes [32, 33].

The improvement work in this study is regarded as a planned change process which, according to Jacobsson [31], needs to have well-developed strategies for improvement, while emerging approaches where school actors adopt an implementation to their own local needs are of decisive importance to achieve results planned changes can be considered conscious and goal-oriented actions where the organisation's members go through different phases to achieve a change [34]. The planned change has a normative element because there is a desired state as an endpoint or goal [35]. In professional, collegial learning communities, teachers and other school staff work to accomplish a unified understanding of their professional mission by identifying fundamental knowledge, skills, motivation, values, and attitudes necessary for the work [25]. Planned changes can be considered conscious and goal-oriented human actions where the organisation's members go through different phases to achieve a difference [34].

### **5. Action research**

According to Koshy [36], action research is seen as a practical approach to gaining a better understanding and improving practice and also to increase the empowerment of the teachers. An action research process includes self-reflective cycles of questioning, gathering data, reflection and deciding the course of action [37]. The approaches

#### *Preschool Improvement Practices DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113143*

are action-oriented and enable participants to learn from their experience, change directions and priorities for their research, and introduce corrections repeatedly throughout the project. Action research is based on a democratic methodology in which the researcher, together with, for example, children in preschool and their teachers, develops knowledge about a specific area and applies this new knowledge practically [38]. The action research approach supports scientifically based professional development following the Swedish Education Act [39] and has its starting point in proven experience and a scientific basis. Warren et al. [40] means that teachers' beliefs, professional identities, and levels of expertise change through action research can be strengthened and changed by an action research approach.
